


move away

by silklace



Category: Crooked Media RPF
Genre: 2008 Campaign Era (Crooked Media RPF), Friends With Benefits, M/M, Pining while fucking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-08-06 20:04:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16394216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silklace/pseuds/silklace
Summary: What happens after?





	move away

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thesmallestacorn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesmallestacorn/gifts).



> Remix of [five feet apart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14494977) by [thesmallestacorn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesmallestacorn/pseuds/thesmallestacorn). This story reads as a sequel. 
> 
> @thesmallestacorn, I hope that you enjoy this and that it feels like it does justice to your story! Thank you for letting me play in your sandbox!
> 
> As with all CM RPF, please do not share, directly or indirectly, with anyone related to this story. Please respect the fourth wall! 
> 
> Thank you to my cheerleaders, who are the best cheerleaders a girl could ask for.  
>  
> 
>    
>  _When my beloved calls my name— in the bathtub, in her bed, over the telephone, into a microphone or my ear— it closes my eyes, buckles me, thralls my insides with the sweet terror of being recognized. Sometimes, we cannot bear the thing we crave._
> 
> \- Melissa Febos, Call My Name

“Dude, you’re whammied,” Tommy says, voice tinny through the phone. “That’s like the tenth time you’ve yawned.”

Jon huffs, his jaw squeaking. He eyes the time on his laptop – it’s past two now, and they’ve been at it since he got home from the office a few hours ago with edits. “I’m fine,” he says, only partially lying. He is tired, but he’s not in any real rush to hang up, not since it’s the first time they’ve caught up with each other since Tommy flew out to Iowa last week to sign for an apartment and help get campaign headquarters up and running. 

“You’re a terrible liar,” Tommy says, and Jon can picture exactly how his face would look as he says it. 

“Yeah,” he says, closing the lid of his laptop. 

“Go to bed.”

He slides the laptop off his thighs. “I’m in bed,” he says, finally. “You go to bed.” When Tommy just makes a doubtful sound, Jon laughs softly. “Dude, it’s 2am, you’ve been up since 5, you’re seriously not tired?

“No, I am,” Tommy says. He sounds distracted. “I just – I dunno. I know how it goes, I guess.”

“How what goes?”

“As soon as I’m actually, y’know, laying down,” he says. Jon can hear the sound of him getting a glass down from a cupboard, filling it at the sink, taking a sip. “I’ll just be like, staring at the ceiling,” Tommy says. “It’s stupid.” He sniffs. “Besides, this hotel is too quiet.”

“Oh,” Jon says. He tips his head back against the pillows more comfortably. He’s warm, almost on the verge of too warm, but he doesn’t want to get up and turn the fan on. He slides the sheet down a little further, over his hips. Outside, a car alarm a few streets over starts going off, muffled and distant. “Nothing helps?” 

Tommy’s quiet on the other end of the line. “Uh,” he says finally, and Jon says, “Yeah?” and Tommy stays quiet until Jon says. “Oh. _Oh._ ” 

He flushes, flexing his feet underneath the sheets. 

Tommy coughs. “Sorry, that was –”

“ – we could,” Jon says. 

“- weird. Or, I mean -”

Above him, the floorboards creak as someone gets up to use the bathroom on the third floor. Jon lowers his voice, sinking back against the pillows further. “I mean, if you wanted.”

There’s a beat of silence, and then Tommy says, in a rush of breath, “Alright.”

The sheets are twisted between Jon’s fingers. He pushes them off. “Cool.”

“Let me just -,” Tommy says, and Jon makes a soft noise of assent. He listens to the sounds of Tommy rustling around in his hotel room – the zip of his suitcase, the soft thwump of clothing being changed, the click of the door locking. He wonders if Tommy’s wearing his old Kenyon sweatpants, or if he just. Maybe he’s just got on his boxers, though, that would – make more sense. Be more efficient. 

He tucks the phone against his shoulder and starts to wriggle out of his own sleep pants, shucking his boxers as he goes, also for efficiency. 

“’Kay,” Tommy says, a minute later. He sounds a little out of breath. “You got something to watch?”

“ – oh, right,” Jon says, looking over at his closed laptop. “Yeah,” he says, thumbing at his hip bone. His dick is hard and flat against his belly. “Ready,” he says, swallowing. 

After that, they don’t talk much. Jon can hear the even rhythm of Tommy breathing, and if he listens harder, what might be the wet sound of him jerking off. Occasionally, he hears a woman moaning, but it’s so faint – he might be making it up. 

At one point, Tommy says, in a bitten off kind of way, “What’re you watching?”

“What?” 

“I -,” Tommy says, and Jon can _hear_ him going red. “It’s hot, I guess,” he says, voice uncertain. “I just – she’s like _begging_ for this dude’s dick.” He huffs an unsteady laugh. “Seems, I dunno. Kinda unrealistic.”

“Tommy,” he says, disbelieving. “It’s _porn_.” 

Tommy laughs. “I know, I know.”

Jon tries to picture it – what Tommy’s watching. Maybe someone on her knees, looking up at some buff guy’s fat dick, her eyes wide and round and pleading. Pouting, maybe. But then, maybe she’d go too far, smirk, look up from under her lashes, say something over the top or demeaning, and that’d be it, for Tommy. Kinda unrealistic. 

It has to be authentic for Tommy. He wouldn’t just want someone to beg for his dick, he’d want them to mean it, to show it, maybe, by kissing their way down his chest first, or by going slowly, moving their mouth along his cock in soft, wet circles, flicking their tongue along the ridge in the middle - 

“Anyways,” Tommy says, and Jon realizes how close he is, how the warm, heavy weight of his orgasm is starting to build in his belly, faster than he expected. “What’re you watching?” Tommy’s voice is soft and low, a little rough from the late hour. Jon shoves his head back against his pillow, can’t help himself from thrusting upwards into the circle of his fist. “Jon?” 

“Fuck,” he breathes out, and comes hard across his fingers. 

“Shit,” he hears Tommy say. “Did you just come?” He sounds unsteady, like he’s close now, too. 

“Yeah,” Jon says. His pulse is rabbiting in his chest. He makes a soft noise, unable to help himself. He feels loose limbed and drowsy all over. He presses his cheek against his pillow. “You close, Tom?”

There’s a sound like the phone is being squeezed too tightly or pressed up against fabric. Maybe Tommy dropped the phone. Or put it down. Jon waits. He runs his finger through the come on his belly. Maybe whatever Tommy was watching got better. More interesting. 

There’s the sound of the phone being picked up again after another minute. “Shit,” Tommy says, but it doesn’t sound like the way he’d said it before, when it had been breathy and unsteady. He laughs into the phone. He sounds like – they could be at a bar, watching a game. Or in the living room after a round of beer pong. 

Jon taps his sticky fingers against his belly. “You good?” 

“Yeah,” Tommy says, comfortable sounding. “You’re – that was quick, man.”

“Fuck you,” Jon says, laughing, and leans down to swipe a t-shirt off the floor. He wipes at his belly. He wants to roll over, pull the sheet up almost over his head, let the feeling of drowsiness take him off into sleep. 

“What – uh, you must’ve been really into – like. Whatever you were watching.” Tommy laughs, again. “What was it?”

“Uh,” Jon hedges. “Two girls,” he says, finally, without thinking too much about it. “They were like, all over each other.”

After a beat, Tommy says, “Shit, man, well, I guess that worked. I’m wiped, I’ll uh. I’ll see you soon.”

“Night, Tommy,” Jon says, and tries not to examine too closely why he doesn’t want to get off the phone, not just yet. 

 

 

Tommy flies back on a Tuesday. 

“You’re crazy,” Alyssa says, watching him stuff his roller bag under his desk. “This is like – a free day off.”

“Nice to see you, too,” Tommy says, a little red-faced from bending over. He straightens up, shrugging. “It’s cool,” he says. “We got shit to do.” He drops into his desk chair. “We got a senator to elect.”

“Fuck me, I hadn’t noticed,” Alyssa says, rolling her eyes. She drops back into her own cubicle only after she’s certain Tommy saw it. 

Jon puts the paper cup of coffee he’d been walking back to his desk on Tommy’s desk, instead. “No one would’ve minded,” he says, mildly, “if you’d taken the rest of the day off.”

“I know.” He flips his laptop open and starts powering up the desktop computer at the same time. 

“Alright,” Jon says. He touches his knuckles to the top of the cubicle. “Sushi later?”

Tommy’s rifling through his work bag, so he doesn’t look up. “You got it.”

“Cool.” He wishes Tommy would look at him, which is – a weird thought. He clears his throat. “Glad you’re back, man.”

It’s only after he’s sat down at his own desk that he hears Tommy say, “Yeah, me too.”

 

 

Whatever weirdness from earlier is gone by the time most of the staff are packing up their bags for the end of the day. Tommy comes up behind him while he’s finishing an email at his desk and flicks his ear. “I’m hungry.”

“Jesus.” Jon tugs his ear where it’s smarting. “Asshole.”

Tommy grins. “Working on it. When I’m like an 80-year-old bastard, you can tell everybody how it happened. ‘He was a sweet kid from the ‘burbs, and then he had to interact with reporters every day for a year.’”

“So sad,” Jon says, grinning and shaking his head. “Too bad you’ve been a bastard as long as I’ve known you.” Tommy looks good – better than this afternoon, at least, when he’d seemed drawn and tired. He’s still got deep circles under his eyes, but at least now he’s smiling, cheeks crinkled up in delight. 

“You anywhere close to getting out of here?”

“Yeah,” Jon says, just as an email pings into his inbox. “I just gotta -,” he swivels back towards his laptop, where an unread email with a red little exclamation point is now sitting. “Uh,” he says, looking back over his shoulder at Tommy. “Thirty minutes?”

Thirty minutes turns into an hour, and when he goes to find Tommy, he’s saying, “Sorry, I got pulled into a thing,” and is shuffling papers as he makes his way towards the conference room. 

“It’s cool,” Jon says, hefting his bag over his shoulder. “I’ll pick up. See you at home.”

He stops at Tommy’s favorite sushi place, even though it’s out of the way, and orders more than he should because he’s hungry and hasn’t eaten since breakfast. He eats standing up in the kitchen, shoves the rest in the fridge, and doesn’t see Tommy until he’s startling awake on the couch hours later and peering up into his face. 

“Hey,” Tommy says, when Jon blinks up at him. His voice is pitched low, and the room is dark with night. It must be really late. “You’re gonna fuck up your neck.”

“Shit,” Jon says, raspy. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.” The house is oddly quiet, even for this time of night. “Where is everybody?”

“Michael wanted to stop at Streeter’s, I think he was meeting up with that girl he hooked up with last weekend. Everybody else just kinda followed him there,” Tommy says and then, “Move up,” as he drops onto the couch. Jon pulls his legs up, planting them on the couch to make room for Tommy, and coughs to cover the intake of breath when Tommy pulls his legs onto his lap once he’s situated.

“Fuck,” Tommy breathes out quietly, settling. 

Jon feels like all of his nerve endings have relocated to his feet, where Tommy is absentmindedly stroking his thumb along the bottom of his socked arch. “Yeah,” he says, quietly, voice tight in his chest. “Good first day back, I guess?”

Tommy rolls his head towards him. “They wanna push up the Iowa timeline.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah,” Tommy says. His eyes are half-lidded. “Next week.”

“That’s,” Jon swallows. “Jeeze.”

“Yeah,” Tommy says. He tips his head back and closes his eyes. “Whatever. Next week or next month - doesn’t make much of a difference.”

“Yeah,” Jon says, “I guess.” Tommy’s working his thumb gently into the pad of Jon’s foot. He clears his throat. “I could uh – I could come out and help you get settled in the new place, you know.”

Tommy shifts on the couch, sinking further into it, and the movement brings Jon’s foot close – closer – to Tommy’s crotch. 

Jon looks away. “If you wanted.”

Tommy laughs. “Nah, I’ll pass on the offer of free help moving to a new place in the middle of flyover country where I don’t know anyone. Thanks, but no thanks.”

“Asshole,” Jon says, and digs the heel of his foot into Tommy’s thigh. 

Tommy makes a noise and shifts like he’s uncomfortable, but instead of moving away his eyes slide closed. “Today has been, like, twenty days.” He’s quiet for a long moment, head tipped back on the couch. The arch of his throat is long – Jon can tell, even in the dim light. Tommy makes a rough sound, shoulders dropping. “I don’t wanna move.”

“Yeah,” Jon says. He swallows. “I know the feeling.”

 

 

“If I don’t get to eat a burrito the size of my face in the next ten minutes, I’m going to have an actual meltdown, I just – I want to be clear on that.” Alyssa blows at the lock of hair that’s fallen across her face, pressing the cross-walk button at the same time. “Don’t make soothing noises at me right now, Tommy.”

Tommy holds his hands up. “Hey, I’m with you. Burrito, face, chop chop.”

The side of Alyssa’s mouth tugs up, but her eyebrows are still dangerously furrowed. “I think we’re all pro-burrito here,” Jon says, in what he hopes is a non-soothing tone. 

“I’m not sure. Probably we should have a two-hour meeting about that stance, Favs, and then decide we can’t come to a consensus at this time.” She rolls her eyes.

Jon’s stomach rumbles loudly as they enter the shop and Tommy gives him a sharp grin. “Didn’t have your Wheaties this morning either?”

He did, actually, because Tommy left the box out for him, like he does every morning, so instead he just grins and says to Alyssa, “Shit, I don’t see “face-sized” on the menu, should we find another - ?”

Alyssa narrows her eyes at him. “You’re lucky you’re pretty.”

Jon goes a little hot around the collar, but he’s fairly sure he’s not blushing. “I think you mean tough-looking and rugged, probably?”

Tommy makes a considering face, sizing Jon up. “No,” he says, “pretty works.”

Alyssa nods with her chin. “Hey,” she says, voice pitched low. “There’s someone else Tommy thinks is pretty.”

Jon feels like he should clarify that Tommy doesn’t personally think he’s pretty, but Tommy’s already saying, “Oh, hey,” and grinning across the restaurant at a brunette staffer Jon thinks works for State. He’s not sure. They hadn’t exactly exchanged resumes when Jon had walked in the kitchen one morning last month and found her poking around the cupboards for coffee in one of Tommy’s old sweatshirts. 

Jon looks at the menu on the wall. He’d wanted a burrito on the way over, but maybe he wants tacos instead. Tommy brushes by him to go say hello to the woman. Maybe something with steak. He rubs his knuckles against his mouth. 

“You’re thinking hard about that burrito, huh,” Alyssa says. 

Jon laughs, though it sounds weird for some reason. He really is hungry. He hasn’t eaten since this morning, and he ran out of the power bars he sometimes keeps in his desk. “What’re you gonna get?” 

Across the room, he hears the girl and Tommy laugh together. She hadn’t been wearing any pants, that morning in the kitchen, and Jon had been conscious of trying not to look at the long expanse of her bare legs as she leaned against the counter, of trying not to imagine what they might have looked like wrapped around – 

“…and maybe a side of cocaine.”

“Funny,” Jon says, eyes sliding away from where Tommy is leaning in close to show the girl something on his phone. “I’m listening, I promise.” Alyssa smiles at him. “What?”

She shakes her head. They’re next in line to order anyways. “Nothing.”

Tommy sidles back over in time to order with them, and then, as they’re leaving, he says, sounding pleased, “Hey, I invited Allison to the party this weekend, that’s cool, right?”

Jon shoves his sunglasses on. He smiles at Tommy, easy-like. “I don’t see why not.”

 

 

On Friday, Jon’s powering his work computer down when he realizes he’s been thinking about time in terms of before and after when Tommy moves to Iowa, and it makes his guts roil so hard he has to stop with his hands on his knees and breathe, slow and even, until the urge to puke goes away. 

When he was in high school, he used to hitch a ride to and from school with his older neighbor, and it wasn’t until halfway through May of his sophomore year when they were opening college acceptance letters in the driveway of his house one afternoon that he realized – _I don’t get to keep this._

It had bothered him enough that he decided he should find his own way to and from school after that, so he’d convinced his parents to let him drive himself the last few weeks of school that year, since that was the plan next year anyways. It would be good practice, he told them. 

Anyways, it wasn’t until his neighbor came to say goodbye for the last time, and had kissed Jon on his bed with the door closed, that Jon had realized why he’d been so upset – and by then it had been too late anyways. 

He puts his forehead down on his desk and looks at the square of grey carpet between his shoes. 

The boy from high school had hair the color of corn husks, and when he kissed Jon, he’d touched him on the back of his neck, and Jon hadn’t been able to stop shivering. 

Jon had just thought he’d really hated taking the bus.

He picks his head up from the desk when he hears footsteps. 

“You good?” Tommy’s got his tie undone, and he’s flicked open the first button on his shirt. Jon can see the dip of his collarbones. “Ready to go?”

Jon smiles, slinging his bag over his shoulder. “I’m good.” 

The music in the bar is loud, but it’s not that busy – early still for a Friday night. Tommy corrals them all a table, and Shomik offers to get the first round. They talk about work, until someone insists that they shouldn’t talk about work, and then they talk about not-work. 

Jon’s halfway through his beer when he realizes it’s not what he wants at all. “Hey, I’m gonna,” he says, gesturing at the bar, and Michael says, “Double-fisting already, nice, Favs.”

Tommy tips his own beer back. “Let me catch up at least.” His hair’s a little wavy from sweat and humidity, and his cheeks are pink from laughter, and he sounds a little breathless like when he – like when he – 

Jon’s chair skitters back on the polished cement. He laughs. “Nah, just not in the mood for shitty beer tonight,” he says. The music in here is so loud. 

He orders a vodka soda, drinks it at the bar, then orders a second one and the next round of beers. He can feel his pulse in his fingertips. He feels like he could punch someone, hasn’t felt that way since he was 16 and hung up on –

There’s a light touch on the small of his back, and then Tommy’s leaning in to say in his ear, “Hey.”

Jon takes a swallow of his drink. He could – he moves away, angles himself so that they’re facing each other, the bar at the small of his back where Tommy’s hand was a moment ago. “Hey,” he says. “I got us a second round.”

“Cool,” Tommy says. He sniffs. “Are you drinking vodka?”

Jon shrugs.

Tommy makes a face. “S’cool man, I’m not like – it’s whatever. Long week, I get it. I’m like, super tense, too.” He rolls his shoulders. 

“Yeah,” Jon says. 

Tommy looks at him for a minute, face unreadable. “Is everything like – alright? You’re being kinda –”

“I’m good, man.” He slaps Tommy on the shoulder. “This is like – your weekend, don’t even – don’t even worry about me.” 

Tommy takes a step closer. “What does that even – I worry about everything, of course I’d worry about –”

Jon wants Tommy to look like he did before, at the table, with his hair loose and his shoulders soft in laughter. He smiles, makes it real, makes it reach his eyes. He is – he is happy. He’s with Tommy. 

“It’s good, Tom.”

“Alright,” Tommy says. He rolls his shoulders again, touches the spot where Jon’s hand had been. “Well, good,” he says, and slips two beer bottles between his fingers, starts helping him carry the drinks back to the table. 

Jon thinks that will be the last of the – weirdness, or whatever, of the night, only the table is littered with half-empty glasses when Tommy reaches into his pocket for his phone, checks the time, slides his phone back into his jacket, and says in a low voice, bracing his hand on Jon’s thigh under the table, “You wanna get out of here?”

Jon startles. The others are preoccupied – checking their phones, draining the last of their beer, making plans to meet up with another group or whoever they’re hooking up with currently. 

“Uh,” Jon says, “yeah.”

“Cool,” Tommy says. He moves his hand away. “You wanna walk or cab it?”

Jon needs to sober up, or he’s going to do something – extremely stupid. “Let’s walk,” he says, and Tommy nods, like he really was waiting for Jon to decide, and would have been fine with whatever Jon wanted. 

It’s cool outside, enough that Tommy pulls on his suit jacket and Jon wishes he had one, but it feels good on his hot face, the sweaty line of his collar. They walk in step with each other, quiet, the sounds of the city washing over them. Jon can hear their footsteps, but he can’t tell them apart. 

After a couple of minutes, Tommy bangs his shoulder against Jon’s. “I can’t believe I’m leaving in a couple of days.” Jon swallows, watching for the light to turn red and the cross-walk signal to blink on. “For fucking _Iowa_. 

“Hey,” Jon says, “don’t let the senator hear you talk like that. Iowans are salt of the earth, good people.”

“Yeah, it’s not the people,” Tommy says, “so much as the unending fields of corn.” The light turns, and Tommy says, in a rush, “Plus, you know, it’s. I’m gonna like – miss everyone, here.”

“Yeah,” Jon says, blinking. “I know.”

The house is quiet when they get home, but the porch light is on and the little light above the oven in the kitchen, too, so they know it’s not empty, which, Jon thinks, maybe explains why Tommy says, “Sh,” in a horrifyingly loud whisper in the hallway outside of their rooms, and then gestures for Jon to follow him. Either that or he’s a little drunker than Jon initially thought, which is – Jon’s drunk, too. On the walk home, all the streetlamps had been blurry, pinpricks of star-shaped light. 

Tommy immediately collapses on to his bed, and Jon leans back against the closed door. 

Tommy hooks his elbow behind his head and peers over at Jon. “You seem – less weird,” he observes, “than you were at the bar. Earlier.”

Jon laughs. “Yeah, I think it’s like – the vodka, man.” He wants to take his tie off, so he does, looping it between his hands. Tommy licks his lips. 

“Do you wanna, like -,” he makes an unbelievable gesture with his fist and Jon laughs so hard he has to sit down on the floor. 

“Fuck you,” Tommy says, pinking up but smiling, laughing, too. He hoists himself off the bed and comes to sit next to Jon on the floor. He pulls his knees up, resting his elbows there. 

“It’s been like – a little bit, since we’ve done that.”

Jon knows. It’s been a week since the last time, and that was on the phone, and before that – 

Tommy puts his mouth on his bicep, and his voice comes out muffled when he says, “It’s just like – the stress from the campaign and everything, I don’t know, fuck.” He straightens. “What am I even saying?”

Jon licks his lips. “I’ve been like, really stressed lately.” He rubs at the back of his head. His belly is already tugging with arousal, thinking about it, now. 

Tommy looks at him. “Yeah? Me – me too.”

“Super stressed,” Jon says. When he looks down, he can see the bulge between Tommy’s legs. 

Tommy breathes in through his nose. “I can get my laptop - ?”

“Won’t it – be too loud?” 

“Right,” Tommy says, like it should’ve been obvious. “Right.”

“We can still -”

“Here?” Tommy’s voice cracks and he clears his throat. “Or like, on the bed?”

“Here is good.” Jon’s not sure he could stand up right now, if he wanted to, so here, on the floor is better, unless – he’d have to crawl probably, on his hands and knees, Tommy watching him – 

“Do you want me to shut my eyes?” Tommy’s voice is so soft it’s like he’s whispering, but not the way he did in the hallway. This is like – he’s using a voice just meant for the two of them to hear, for the soft, warm places where their bodies are just barely almost not-touching. 

Jon shakes his head, and Tommy makes an impatient noise. He’s touching himself between his legs now, rubbing the heel of his hand against his hard dick. “Do it, man,” Tommy says, “C’mon.”

“Fuck,” Jon gets out, soft and explosive. “Yeah,” he says, and starts unbuckling his pants, shoving them down to his thighs, getting his dick in his hand and tugging. Tommy’s doing the same, fumbling to get his dick out. He jumps when his bare thighs touch the floor, muttering “Cold,” and his knee, propped out to the side, brushes against Jon’s thigh. Neither of them move away. 

Jon’s not going to last long and that’s better, he decides. He doesn’t want it to last too long, he wants it – hard and fast, Tommy grunting next to him, hand moving quickly over his dick, twisting so that his palm rubs across the head on every upstroke. Jon tightens his own hand, then spits on his other fingers and toys with the head of his dick using his thumb and forefinger, light touches that make a pearl of precome bead up at the tip.

“Shit,” Tommy grunts, and Jon realizes that he’s – watching him, watching Jon play with his dickhead. “Is that – good?”

Jon swallows back a moan, but the tenor of it slides into his voice anyways when he says, “So good,” and then, “drives me crazy.”

Tommy’s head drops back against the door. His chest is rabbiting, his breath uneven and shaky. “Shit,” he says again. “You’re so –”

“Yeah,” Jon says, his own voice tight, “I like it – like that,” he explains, and watches Tommy’s thighs jump. “I like it – I want it, Tommy,” he says, and then Tommy’s coming with a bitten off noise that wraps its way around Jon’s dick and fucking _tugs_ until he’s slamming his eyes shut and coming across his fist, his other hand scrabbling against the floor. 

He listens to the sound of Tommy breathing through his nose. The pinpricks of light are back and he blinks to try and dislodge them. He should – he needs to go to bed. He starts to pull his clothes back in place, stopping when Tommy puts a hand on his wrist. 

“What?”

Tommy’s eyelashes are almost invisible, even this close up. After a moment, he takes his hand away. “Nothing.” He reaches up and grabs the tissue box off of his bedside table. “Here.”

“Thanks.” The back of Jon’s throat hurts. God, he really needs to go to bed. 

Tommy pulls himself up off the floor, sitting back down on his bed and rubbing at his thighs, one knuckle working into the meat of his leg. “Uh,” he says.

“That was good,” Jon says. “I mean -”

“Sure,” Tommy says, “Definitely less like. Stressed.”

“Good.” Jon rubs at his thighs, then stops when he realizes he’s mirroring Tommy. “Guess I’ll -,” he pushes off the floor and stands up, catching himself on the door, his vision going blurry for a minute. 

Tommy sits forward. “You alright?”

Jon needs to get out of Tommy’s room, not faint in his lap. “Fine,” he says tightly, not looking at Tommy. 

“Alright. Night, then.”

Jon gets his hand around the doorknob. “G’night.”

 

 

Tommy comes home halfway through the next day with a pile of flattened moving boxes from Home Depot. He shoulders Jon’s door open on the way to his room. “Come help me pack,” he says, a little winded from the stairs. 

Jon sits up on his bed and wipes hurriedly at the sandwich crumbs on his t-shirt. One of the boxes is trying to make a leap from Tommy’s fingers, and he squashes it against the door with a thwacking sound to rescue it. 

“Alright,” Jon says, swinging his legs off the bed. He wrestles a bunch of the boxes out of Tommy’s grip. “Gimme those.”

“Eager fucking beaver, huh,” Tommy says, with a grin. 

“Shut up,” Jon says and knocks his shoulder against Tommy’s on his way out. 

Tommy’s room looks halfway to packed; his suitcase is propped open at the foot of the bed with half of the contents of his dresser sticking out of it. The door to his closet is opened, and what looks like a bag of unwanted items is sitting on his unmade bed. There’s a crumpled wad of tissues next to the door, which are probably – from last night – when he and Tommy – 

Tommy groans. “God, I hate packing.”

Jon makes a sympathetic noise, shrugging. “You don’t really have all that much stuff. Shouldn’t take us too long.”

It doesn’t, even though halfway through Tommy gets distracted looking through old books, and then Jon has an allergy attack from the dust and has to go sneeze in the hallway for 10 minutes until Tommy brings him a Benadryl, which makes him sleepy and mostly useless after that. Tommy finally pushes him onto the bed and throws a pillow at his head. 

When he wakes up, it’s to the sound of laughter coming from the kitchen. He’s alone in Tommy’s room, in Tommy’s bed. The pillow under his head smells like Tommy. He gives himself 10 more seconds with that moment, counting it out in his head, and then pulls himself out of bed and ambles down the hallway, knuckling at his eyes. He feels disoriented and thirsty. 

“Hey, sleepyhead.” Tommy’s in running shorts and sneakers and that’s it. His chest is covered in sweat. Jon takes a deep breath. 

“Hey,” he says, nodding with his chin. 

Mike’s filling the fridge with beers. “Favreau,” he crows. “We got you your own personal handle!” He holds up a bottle of vodka.

Right. The party tonight. Jon pulls a face. “Perfect. I love puking up straight vodka.”

“No puking,” Ronnie intones, from where he’s apparently rolling joints at the kitchen counter. He holds up the little baggie of weed he’s working with. “Go natural, Favs.”

Jon tilts his head considering, “Yeah? Natural like the last time when you had us smoking oregano?”

“Ooh,” Mike says, knees popping as he hauls a second thirty rack into the fridge. “Tough hit, Ronnie.”

Jon nods at Tommy. “You shoulda woken me,” he says, gesturing at Tommy’s whole flushed, glistening appearance. “I woulda come with.” He rubs a hand over his buzz-cut. 

Tommy shrugs. “Couldn’t bring myself to wake you.” He looks down at the protein shake in his hand, like he forgot what he was doing with it. 

“You done packing, then?” Mike is balling up an empty shopping bag between both hands, looking curiously at Tommy. 

“Pretty much,” Tommy says, shrugging and putting his shaker bottle in the sink. 

Mike looks like he’s gearing up to ask more questions, so Jon says, “Gotta shower,” and makes his way down the hallway, ducking into his room to grab his towel off the hook on his door. He’s not in the mood for small talk. He’s not in the mood for Tommy’s chest, frankly. 

He’s at the door of the bathroom when Tommy stops him. “Hey,” he says, fingers light on Jon’s forearm. He looks back over his shoulder at the kitchen, twisting around again. “Uh, I should shower, too.”

“I’ll be quick,” Jon promises. He slots one hand in the waistband of his sweats, skritching his fingers along his belly. Tommy smells like sweat and clean laundry. He wishes they’d gone for a run together; he feels stupid and sleep warm and keeps thinking about putting his face in the sweaty crook of Tommy’s neck, which should be disgusting but isn’t. 

Tommy’s eyes track the movement of Jon’s hand against his belly, then glance away. “We could just,” he shrugs and jerks his head back at the bathroom instead of finishing that sentence. “Two birds, one stone,” he offers, mouth tugging up a little. 

Jon’s mouth is so dry. He should’ve grabbed a drink when he was in the kitchen. He nods back to where he can hear Ronnie and Mike shuffling around, talking. “Even with - ?”

Tommy shrugs. “Who cares? They’re idiots. They won’t even notice.”

Jon once heard that three explanations point to a lie. He wonders which one of Tommy’s explanations is the lie. 

“You’re the idiot,” he says, but he can’t help himself from grinning, and besides, he thinks he heard that on a TV show. Tommy’s eyes flick down to his mouth. “C’mon then,” he says, and bangs past Tommy into the tiny bathroom. 

Tommy turns the water on and Jon shucks off his sweats and says, “Will your new place even be ready in time? With the new move-in date?” Tommy’s leaving in five days. Jon steadies himself with a hand on the sink. 

“Should be,” Tommy says, tugging his shorts down. “The lease on HQ might be tougher.”

Jon snorts. “What, is everyone gonna just pile into your living room until the office is ready?” He hooks his t-shirt over his head. 

“Yeah, well, remember me when you’re here in your cushy office job,” Tommy says. He digs his fingers into Jon’s ribs, pushing him towards the tub. “Get in.”

“You – get in,” Jon bites back absurdly. Tommy’s naked, and Jon has seen him without his shirt on, has seen him in just boxers, has seen him in a towel, has sat next to him as they jerked off together for fuck’s sake, but it’s different, now, here, with Tommy’s dick leaning heavy against his thigh, the freckles on his chest visible in the harsh light of the bathroom. 

Tommy shoves at him again. “Get in the fucking shower, Favreau,” he says, grinning, and Jon stumbles in backwards, Tommy following after him with dark eyes. 

He shifts aside to let Tommy have the stream of water first, and Tommy tips his chin forward gratefully. His hair darkens under the spray, water beading along his chest. 

Jon cuts his eyes away and reaches for the shampoo. “Here,” he says, handing it over. He grabs the shower gel and starts to soap himself up, careful of his knees and elbows in the small space. Tommy sighs a little when he rubs at his scalp, massaging the shampoo into his hair.

Jon wants to touch him so bad it makes his teeth hurt. 

“How many miles did you do?” he asks, just for something to fucking say. 

“Six,” Tommy says, spitting water from his mouth and pulling a face. “I didn’t have you there to slow me down.” 

“Fuck you, I’m like way faster than you.”

“Yeah, but I’m bigger,” Tommy says, flexing his shoulders, and then he’s gripping Jon around the wrists and pinning him against the wall, one arm behind his back and the other above his head. “So I can do this.”

“Tommy,” Jon says, plaintive, working his jaw. The tile is cool against his cheek, and Tommy’s dick is hard against his hip. 

Tommy gives him a little shove. “See?” 

He wants to push back against the feeling of Tommy’s hard-on rubbing at him, wants to roll his hips and let Tommy see how much he – fuck. He flexes the muscles in his thighs. He can’t think with Tommy all over him like this. “We’re like the same size,” he finally says, dumbly, and tugs his way out of Tommy’s grip. 

Tommy lets him go. 

Jon’s dick is thick and hot against his thigh, heart racketing around in his chest. “You good?” Tommy asks, watching him. 

Jon nods. “Yeah,” he says. “All good.”

Tommy nods, turning towards the shower spray, dick bobbing between his legs. When he’s finished washing the shampoo out of his hair, he wraps a soapy hand around his dick and tugs at himself, turning halfway back towards Jon. “You wanna - ?”

“Yeah,” Jon says, eyes flicking down to where Tommy’s hand is moving. Tommy’s dick is – god. Pink-headed and long and thick. “Yeah,” Jon says again, and he forces himself to look away, feet making a wet sound as he angles himself away from Tommy, looking out at the plastic curtain, where the steam is making it hard to see through.

He closes his eyes and starts to jack himself, tipping back until his shoulders touch the tile of the shower wall, sending a jolt of cold so sharp it feels almost like pain. It wraps around his dick, tugs his mouth open in a soft barely-breathed out moan. 

There’s a cracking sound and then Tommy grunts, “Shit.” When Jon opens his eyes, he mutters, “Banged my elbow.”

“Here,” Jon says, and tugs himself in closer, props them both up away from the wall, the water pounding on Tommy’s back. He keeps his hand on Tommy’s forearm and closes his eyes again.

Tommy makes a low sound and puts his wet hand on Jon’s hip. “Is this – okay?” he asks. 

Jon can feel every inch of Tommy’s hand. He opens his eyes, blinks up into Tommy’s pink face. His lashes are spiky with water. His mouth is wet and open. “Yeah,” Jon breathes. “So good.” 

“Good,” Tommy says, fingers tightening on Jon’s hip. “Do it the way you did last night,” he says. 

“Alright,” Jon says, like it’s a careless thing to say, like his pulse isn’t pounding in his fingertips, in his ears, in his dick. He moves his hand from Tommy’s forearm, down to his cockhead, peeking through the fist of his other hand. 

He taps his index finger against the head of his dick, the slit, until a dribble of precome appears and he can smear it around with his finger, walking the knife edge of oversensitivity. He can feel Tommy’s eyes on him, can see the way his hand slows down on his own dick as he gets lost watching him. Watching what Jon is doing for him. 

Jon touches himself like that until it’s too much, until he has to pull his hand away and his cock jumps against his belly without his help. 

“Fuck,” Tommy says, voice harsh and low. “You like that, huh?”

Jon makes a noise in his throat, feeling like he can’t talk. He fits his hand back over his dick, aching with the need to come, and fists himself in one long, satisfying stroke. 

“You close?” 

Jon nods. “I don’t want to come first again,” he admits, and that makes Tommy laugh, makes his fingers spasm on Jon’s hip. He tugs Jon in a little closer, the wet smacking sound of their bodies under the shower spray like a warm hand on Jon’s belly, guiding him towards orgasm. 

“You can,” Tommy says, permissive. “I like -,” he bites his lip. “It’s fine if you come first.”

Jon’s so breathless, hurtling towards the edge. “Fuck,” he says, wanting and wanting and wanting. 

“Come on,” Tommy urges, a mottled flush spreading across his chest, his throat. “Do it, Jon, come for me,” he bites out, and Jon shoves his face into the wet hinge of Tommy’s shoulder and comes, warmth splashing between them. 

“Oh, fuck,” Tommy breathes, “fuck, Jon,” he says, and then he’s coming, too, from the sound of it, from the way his fingers are digging in against Jon’s hip, painfully tight, breath harsh against Jon’s throat.

Tommy lets go almost right away though, scrubbing his hand over his face. “Fuck.” He looks like he could go again, like it wasn’t enough, like he could run six more miles or start a fight with someone. 

Jon flicks his eyes away from Tommy’s face, down to his chest and stomach and he’s - pretty sure that’s his come on Tommy’s belly, he’s not sure, but he thinks probably it is –

“Jesus,” Tommy says, startling when Jon reaches out and rubs at the come there, which is only to help clean Tommy up, which should be obvious except Tommy says, laughing, “What’re you doing?”

Jon pulls his hand back. “Nothing,” he laughs. “I don’t know.”

“Alright,” Tommy says. “That was –”

Jon’s fingers are tingling. He wants to lick his lips, where he can feel a drop of water clinging that he collected off of Tommy’s skin when his face was -. “You done?” 

“Yeah,” Tommy says, and he sounds like he’s still trying to catch his breath. “Yeah, I’m good.”

Tommy leaves the bathroom first, and Jon waits a few beats before following him out, his wet feet leaving prints all the way back to his room. 

 

 

Jon’s halfway through a joint when he has two thoughts come into his head at once: first, that he should smoke more often because it feels really fucking good, and second, that he wants Tommy to come in his mouth. 

He shoves the joint in Alyssa’s direction. “I gotta -”

“Nooooo, Favs,” she says, tipping towards him. “Don’t go. Look! Who else is going to help me finish this cake,” she says, reasonably. 

He looks around at the remains of Tommy’s goodbye cake. “I believe in you,” he says, clasping her forearm with his. He’s gotta get some air. He’s gotta get out from under this table that Alyssa decided was the best place in the house to smoke. He’s gotta stop thinking about what Tommy might say if Jon offered to suck his dick. 

“You’re useless,” Alyssa says, pushing him away. 

“I am,” he agrees. “I really, deeply am.” 

He slides out from under the table, banging his head and then his hip as he goes. “Jesus,” he mutters. 

“Favs!” Shomik is there, all of a sudden, slinging his arm around Jon’s shoulder. “How is she?” His eyes are red-rimmed and heavy lidded. “How was the cake received?”

Jon, dimly, has a memory of Shomik appearing under the table with the cake, doing a complicated arm gesture that involved a lot of flourishes, and then disappearing. “Uh,” he says. “I mean, I think she feels pretty good about the cake. Like, the cake, full stop,” he clarifies, at the way Shomik’s eyes go wide and a little dreamy.

“So, what you’re saying is – I should bring her more offerings?”

Jon makes a considering face. “Uh.” He really wants to get to the door, which will lead to the outside, where he can get away from the noise and the clatter of the party. _Well, you can’t get away from the noise in your head telling you to suck Tommy’s cock, can you,_ a voice in his head helpfully supplies. 

“More offerings are usually – usually good,” he finally says, reasonably. “You could also try talking to her, you know, and like telling her your feelings?” _Hypocrite_ the voice says, and Jon would like the voice in his head to kindly walk off a cliff. 

Instead, he slips out from under Shomik’s arm, pushing his way through the people and finally outside, where he leans back against the door and takes a deep breath, looking out at – 

“Oh, shit,” he says, jumping back. Everything in his brain goes white and blank. “Shit, sorry.”

Tommy pulls back from where he’s got the girl from the burrito shop – State staffer, his brain supplies helpfully – up against the patio railing, kissing her. His hand is on her jaw. He swallows when he sees Jon. “My bad,” he says. 

“No,” Jon says, and his voice sounds – uncomfortably loud. “Definitely. Definitely my bad.” Tommy looks like he’s going to say something else, but then he closes his mouth. 

“Sorry,” Jon says again, fumbling with the door. He gets it open and says, once more, for good measure, “Sorry!”

After that, Jon goes and lies down in his bed, where he doesn’t think about the way Tommy had looked at him on the patio, or about the curve of his hand on the girl’s hip, or the small, impatient noise he’d made earlier, in the shower, when his hand had been on Jon’s hip.

He puts the pillow over his head, and he waits to fall asleep. 

 

 

On Monday, Alyssa leans over their cubicle wall and says, “Did you have fun this weekend? I enjoyed our table time, FYI.”

Jon stirs a packet of sweetener into his coffee. He prefers real sugar, but all they had this morning were the little pink packets. 

Shomik says, “Alyssa, I also enjoyed our table time, in case you were wondering.”

Actually, what he’d prefer is a big, fat iced coffee from Dunkins, the kind that Tommy rolls his eyes at and then spends the next hour stealing gulps from, but right now he’s got instant coffee in a paper cup.

Michael says, “You know who else enjoyed some table time?”

Tommy flips his laptop open. “In case anyone cares, we’re like, about to start a conference call.”

“Aw,” Michael says, “did someone _not_ enjoy their table time this weekend?” He lowers his voice. “If it hurts to pee, Tommy, they’ve got creams for that.”

Tommy flashes a look at Michael. “You’re a full-blown idiot.”

Alyssa wrinkles her nose. “I do want to point out that like, when _I_ said table time, I was referring to – not that. Not that at all.”

“Oh, look,” Jon says, mildly, watching the conference call indicator light up, “the meeting is starting.”

 

 

Tommy leaves on Thursday, early in the morning. They pack his car up the night before, and then he calls his mom, and then his dad and stepmom, and spends most of the evening walking in circles around the living room, one hand tucked against his belly under his shirt, the other holding the phone to his ear. 

Jon watches him until he can’t stand it anymore and then he goes to his room and shuts the lights off. 

Around midnight, there’s a knock on his door. He reaches over and turns his bedside lamp on. 

“Hey,” Tommy says. His voice is quiet. 

“Hey.”

“Were you sleeping?” 

“No,” Jon says. “Not yet.”

Tommy scrubs at the back of his neck. “Did you buy your tickets for next weekend?”

Jon swallows. “Yeah.” He wishes Tommy would hug him. It’s – normal to hug friends, right? He pulls up his flight confirmation on his phone. “I land on Friday at…like,” he wiggles his hand, “9ish.”

“Cool,” Tommy says. “That’s good.” He palms the door frame. “Good,” he says, again, inspecting the frame like he’s got a sudden burning interest in architecture. Carpentry. What the fuck ever. Then he says, “I’m not even gonna like – say goodbye, ‘cause. Yeah.”

Jon lifts one shoulder. “I’m gonna be out there like all the time anyways.” 

“Yeah, and I’m sure like I’ll be racing back to Chi town every weekend.”

“Yeah,” Jon says. It wouldn’t even be a big deal for Tommy to hug him, though, right now. Like, it wouldn’t have to be a thing. 

“’Kay,” Tommy says. He knocks his knuckles on the door frame. “Sleep tight.”

 

 

“It’s so fucking quiet here, dude.”

Jon laughs into the phone. “I know.” He fumbles with the keys, one-handed, plastic shopping bags cutting into his wrist. “Oh, fuck – Jesus. Dropped my keys.”

“See?” Tommy’s voice is light, relaxed. “That’s what I miss. The sound of you dropping your keys at the door every night.”

“’Every night’ might be an exaggeration.” He pushes inside, hanging his keys on the hook by the door and toeing his shoes off. 

“Fair,” Tommy says. “Sometimes it’d be your phone instead. You know you’re unexpectedly clumsy.”

“Oh,” Jon says, biting his tongue to stop from laughing. “Is this – just the part of the conversation where you give me constructive criticism?”

“Jon,” Tommy says, “consider it more like constructive feedback.”

“Tommy,” Jon says politely, “consider going and fucking yourself.”

Tommy laughs, bright and happy. Jon can almost taste it. He loosens his tie. His bedroom is kind of a mess, and flinging his jacket and bag on the floor isn’t helping, but right now he doesn’t really mind. He sinks onto his bed, undoing his belt. 

Tommy’s laughter quiets. “Long day?”

Jon huffs. “Sorta. Not too bad, though.”

Tommy hums. “Hey,” he says, like he’s just thought of it. “I picked up some extra shit when I was at the store, so you’re like, all set for this weekend.” He sounds like he’s pacing, that way he gets sometimes at night when he’s too wired to even sit down. “Like, toothbrush and deodorant and shit.” 

“Oh,” Jon says. 

Tommy hums again, distracted-sounding. “Yeah, figured it’d just be easier. I was out, anyways.”

Jon scratches lightly at his chest, drags his thumb along his collarbone. “Thanks, man.” He clears his throat. “How’s HQ?”

Tommy laughs. “It’s coming. I mean, right now it kind of looks like an abandoned warehouse to be honest, but like. We’ll get there. They wanna bring in the film crews soon again.”

“Shit, yeah, I think I have a filming day next week? I gotta check that again.” He flops back on his bed, tugging the pillow under his head. He doesn’t mind having the film crews around that much, but it makes everyone jittery and careful in a way he finds draining. Usually, he and Tommy would wake up early and go for long runs on filming days to work the nerves out.

“Mmm, maybe this time you won’t be hungover.”

Jon laughs, eyes falling shut. “I was _tired_ ,” he protests. 

“Right,” Tommy says, “from staying up and drinking almost a whole box of wine with me the night before.”

Jon laughs again, remembering. “That was a good night,” he says, voice soft. He tucks his lip between his teeth. 

Tommy’s voice is low, almost breathy when he says, “I liked that night.”

Jon can hear the sound of a car door slamming shut somewhere outside. He rubs his cheek against his pillow. “Hey, Tommy,” he says, keeping his eyes closed. Tommy’s been gone for almost a week. “Do you wanna -”

“Yeah,” Tommy says, and then, admits, “Been waiting for you to say something all night.”

Jon wants him so much it feels like a bruise, something dark and sore to poke at. “You coulda asked –”

“I always – 

“ – I’m not like ever gonna say no to you, anyways.“

“Jesus,” Tommy breathes. “Yeah? You’d let me just do whatever?”

“Yeah,” Jon says. Tommy sounds wound up, a little scared. “I would,” he says again, because he owes Tommy that much. 

“Fuck. That’s – touch yourself for me,” Tommy says. “Are you – are you touching yourself?”

“Yeah – just. Lemme get my pants off.” He tries to shove his pants off his hips and undo the button at the same time and gets a little unbalanced, wrestling around in his bedsheets. 

“You could just – take everything off,” Tommy offers casually.

“Oh,” Jon says. “Yeah, alright.”

“Like, how - in the shower,” Tommy explains, as if it needs clarifying. 

Jon wants to laugh, make a joke, say, “I kinda got the gist of ‘take your clothes off’” but he’s afraid of spooking Tommy. He licks his lips, shoving his pants off his ankle with one foot. “Are you – what’re you doing?”

“I’m uh -,” Tommy laughs, a little self-consciously. “I took my shirt off,” he says, and Jon’s mouth actually fucking waters, picturing it - Tommy in his apartment, alone, wandering around in just his gym shorts, waiting for Jon to -. “I’m – fuck, I’m really hard, Jon.”

“Me too,” Jon says, breath catching as his gets his hand around himself, arching his hips off the bed to meet his fist. He wishes Tommy were here, could see how much Jon wants to make it good for him. “I’m not gonna last long,” he says, belly clenching when Tommy moans through the phone. 

They don’t talk much after that, listening instead to the breathy noises, the soft moans each of them are making – or at least, that’s what Jon’s doing. He doesn’t know what Tommy’s doing, or what he’s thinking.

When Jon comes, he turns the hand holding the phone around and bites his knuckles to keep from crying out, but Tommy seems to know, because he says, a little frantically, “Is that - ? Did you - ?” before muffling the sound of his own bitten off grunt. 

Jon presses the back of his wrist to his mouth, blinking hard up at the ceiling. He takes a big, shuddering breath and puts the phone back to his ear. Tommy isn’t saying anything, and Jon – doesn’t know what to say. He never knows what to say, after. 

Finally, Tommy says, as if it just occurred to him, “Hey, you know I didn’t like – have sex with Allison, right?”

“Uh, who?” Jon reaches over for a tissue from the box on his nightstand, but it’s empty. 

“Allison – the girl, the one from the party? Michael, I think, made it sound like we fucked or whatever, but like. We didn’t. I didn’t want – whatever, Michael’s an asshole.”

“Alright,” Jon says, slowly. He needs to get up and clean the come off his hand. 

“I just like – wanted to clarify.”

“Clarified,” Jon says. Tommy always gets weird about this kind of thing, like he thinks it reflects badly on him if he’s not upfront and honest about his hook-ups. Or not-hook-ups. “That’s – cool,” Jon says. 

Tommy’s quiet on the other end of the line, and then he yawns loudly. “I’m beat.”

Jon’s tired, too, but he doesn’t – it would be weird to stay on the phone until one of them falls asleep, so he says goodnight, too. 

 

 

Jon pulls out his phone to text Tommy as soon as the plane lands. _Landed . Let me kno if u had 2 stay late. I can get a cab_

He scrubs his hands over his face, the top of his head, feeling wrung out and a little queasy like he always does after flying. His phone buzzes. _Nope :) I’m here now_

Jon’s stomach flips again, and he takes a deep breath through his mouth. _See u in a minute_

Tommy pulls him into a one-armed hug when he sees him. He smells good, like he’s wearing the expensive cologne his Mom bought him last year for Christmas. “Shit, it’s good to see you,” he says, happily, muffled against Jon’s temple. 

Jon’s got both of his arms around Tommy’s body, and he lets himself have that for another five seconds, counting it out, and then he pulls away. “Hey, man.”

They load his bags in the car and navigate out of the airport. Tommy looks relaxed, driving one-handed and making a lot of dumb jokes, in the way he sometimes gets when he’s trying to distract Jon before they board a plane, but it’s working, because by the time Tommy says, “You wanna grab a drink?” Jon can nod and mean it. 

It’s a sports bar, which means it’s loud and the lighting is weird, but it’s also familiar, down to the cardboard coasters and the whiff of cleaning product Jon gets as they grab stools at the bar. They order whiskeys, and Tommy’s knee keeps brushing against his own. “Sorry,” he says, the first time, but then he does it again. 

It makes Jon shiver, and Tommy has to hide a smile behind his fist. “You feeling better?”

Jon nods, taking a sip of his whiskey. He is. Tommy’s got a pen mark on his index finger, and Jon’s spent the last few minutes wondering what it would be like to have that finger in his mouth, between his teeth. “I fucking hate flying,” he says, instead. 

“I know, dude,” Tommy says, with such sincerity that Jon has to take another gulp of his drink or else he’s going to do something stupid. He looks around the bar. Especially stupid for a sports dive in the middle of the country. 

He moves his knee away under the bar. 

They finish the whiskey, then order a couple of beers, and then Tommy stretches and says, “I gotta drive,” and Jon puts his thumb on the condensation of his bottle and says, “Yeah, I could use a shower, anyways,” and Tommy flashes a look at him. Jon bites his lip. 

In the car, Tommy looks over at him halfway through the drive and says, “Don’t fall asleep on me here, man.”

“I’m not,” Jon protests, smiling with his tongue between his teeth. “I’m just like – comfy.” He is - he feels warm all over from the whiskey and the beer; from the way Tommy keeps throwing heated looks his way. 

Tommy slaps his thigh. “Good.” His fingers curl around the pant seam at Jon’s knee, and he doesn’t move his hand away. Jon swallows, looking out the window. 

“Hey, Tommy,” he says, sinking down in his seat a little, pressing his knee into the warm cup of Tommy’s palm. “You could drive like – a little faster.”

“Jesus,” Tommy says. He speeds up. 

They get Tommy’s door open, and Jon’s bags tossed in the hallway, and the door just barely closed again before Tommy is turning towards him and pushing him back up against it, hands planted on either side of Jon’s head, like he means to - 

“Yeah,” Jon says, eyes soft, watching Tommy, looking at him in the low, thrown light from the streetlamps. He doesn’t know what he means. Or what he’s saying. His heartbeat is in his fingertips, and Tommy is so close Jon can see the way his throat is working, jaw clenching as he crowds in closer. 

He brings his hands up around Tommy’s neck, fingers cupping the back of his skull. “C’mon, you can -”

Tommy makes a bitten off sound, tipping his forehead against Jon’s. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He pushes his hips forward. Tommy slides his hand into Jon’s hair. Outside, a car alarm is going off. 

Jon closes his eyes. “Please, Tommy.” He doesn’t know what he’s asking for, not really, only that he wants it to happen. 

Tommy puts a hand on his jaw. “Jon,” he says, voice quiet, and then he’s kissing him, soft and unhurried, and Jon can’t help the sound he makes. His back thumps against the door as Tommy shoves in closer and he makes that noise again; a bitten-off, punched-out sound.

“Please,” he says, helpless, and Tommy does it again – pushes him hard against the door, mouth going rough against his jaw. 

“I’m gonna -,” Tommy says, panting a little, working his thigh between Jon’s legs. 

“Yeah,” Jon says, rolling his hips, “Give it to me.”

“Oh my god.” Tommy drops his head onto Jon’s shoulder. “You - .” Tommy is so still, suddenly, except for where his fingers are shaky on Jon’s jaw. 

“Tommy?” 

Tommy lifts his head, looking at Jon. His face is – serious and uncertain all at once. He leans in and kisses Jon, fingers flexing like he’s trying to hold himself back. Jon wants to tell him he doesn’t have to hold back. “Is this okay?” 

Tommy nods, then shakes his head. Then he kisses Jon and asks, “Can I blow you?”

Jon shudders, breath catching in his throat. His dick is so heavy between his legs, and Tommy’s started moving his thigh in tight little circles, like he wants Jon to fucking – ride him – 

“Yeah,” he says, breathless, “you can, if you want,” like it’s no big deal for Tommy to be asking for his dick, “you don’t have to -”

“I want to,” Tommy says quickly, and then he’s dropping to his knees right there in the hallway, running his hands up Jon’s thighs like he can’t fucking wait to get his mouth around him. 

Jon thumps his head back against the door, squeezing his eyes shut, dick fattening up already. Tommy’s undoing his belt buckle and pants, pushing them down, not making a show of it, like he’s nervous – or focused – or maybe just thinking about it, what it will be like when – 

“Tommy,” Jon breathes, eyes flying open, as Tommy leans forward and sucks the tip of Jon’s dick into his mouth. “Oh, fuck,” he moans, voice cracking. Tommy’s mouth is hot and wet on him, so good Jon can feel it from the arches of his feet to the tips of his fingers. 

He touches Tommy’s head, very gently, and Tommy goes down on him, mouth sliding neatly over Jon’s dick until he chokes. 

“Sorry,” Jon says, hushed, but Tommy just closes his eyes and starts to bob his head, rhythmic, settling into the pace, moving his mouth wetly along Jon’s dick, tightening the circle of his lips and hollowing his cheeks.

It gets sloppy almost right away, drool on Tommy’s chin, and Jon wants to drag his fingers through it, taste himself, taste Tommy’s spit, which is so fucked up – so filthy. He’s never wanted it like this from anyone else, never been this weird with anyone else.

When Tommy pulls back and flicks his tongue along the slit, Jon chokes, head cracking back against the door again, and Tommy makes a pleased sound.

“Say my name again,” he says, pulling back. He jacks Jon’s cock, kisses the cut of his hip. 

“Fuck, Tommy,” Jon breathes, and watches Tommy’s mouth go slack and loose with pleasure. He shoves his hand into his open pants and slides his mouth down Jon’s cock again, like it’s that good, having Jon’s dick in his mouth, that he has to touch himself about it. 

“Feels so good, Tom,” Jon says tightly, wanting him to know, wanting him to understand. Tommy angles his mouth and lets Jon’s dickhead rub against the soft skin of his cheek, and they both moan together. The muscle in Jon’s thigh starts to kick up, and Tommy does it again, smearing his cheek over the head of his dick, so that Jon can see the shape of himself in Tommy’s mouth. 

“I’m gonna,” Jon warns, and Tommy tightens his suck, moving his mouth up and down Jon’s cock in these frantic little motions, urging him on, until Jon is coming, groaning loud enough that he shoves his own fist over his mouth, even as Tommy plants his hands on Jon’s thighs and sucks him through it, throat working as he swallows.

“Shit,” Jon says, breathing sharply through his nose, heart still racing. He pushes Tommy back and drops to his knees, “Can I - ?”

“Yeah,” Tommy bites out, hand still working himself over, and when Jon leans forward he makes a small, pained sound and says, “Fuck, I’m gonna,” closer than he thought, or realized, and he’s coming hard across Jon’s open mouth, his cheek, his chin. “Shit, sorry, sorry.”

Jon closes his eyes, laughing, and tips over onto his back. “Don’t be sorry,” he says, finally. He licks his lips, tasting Tommy’s come. Tommy makes another one of those pained noises, and Jon cracks an eye up at him. “I’ve thought about that,” he admits. “You coming on my face.” 

“Oh,” Tommy says. 

They stay there, quiet, for several long moments. Finally, Jon turns his head towards Tommy, again. “Probably could use a shower, at this point.”

Tommy looks at him, mouth tugging up. “Me too.”

This is usually the part where they hang up the phone, or Jon leaves and goes back to his own room. He looks at Tommy, looks away, then back again. “Two birds, one stone?”

 

 

It takes most of the next day to finish unpacking Tommy’s belongings, and even then the small apartment is pretty bare. “It’s fine,” Tommy says, looking around the beige kitchen. “I’m like, barely going to even be here.”

They do work for a couple of hours, and then Tommy’s knee starts to bounce. He shuts the lid of his laptop, scratching at the back of his neck. “I think I’m going to go for a run,” he says. 

“I’ll come with,” Jon says, shutting his computer, too. 

“Cool,” Tommy says, standing up. “Or,” he offers casually, looking away, “I could suck you off again.”

Jon’s pretty sure his eye twitches. He makes a rough noise. “Okay,” he says, but in the end, he’s the one who slides to his knees, pushing Tommy back on the couch and sucking him off with long, slick strokes of his mouth, drawn out enough that Tommy’s gasping and arching up for it by the time he comes. 

After, they get burgers and eat them on the floor of Tommy’s kitchen, and then Tommy turns on ESPN and hands Jon a beer. Halfway through the game, Tommy picks up Jon’s foot and pulls it into his lap, massaging with the heel of his palm. 

“That’s nice,” Jon says, and Tommy goes a little pink, shrugging, keeping his eyes on the TV. 

After a minute, he says, “I like making you feel good.”

He says it again, later, when they’re in bed, when Jon’s got his hand around both their dicks and can’t stop shivering with the way Tommy is kissing his neck. He says it and presses each word into the skin of Jon’s throat, and Jon’s mouth is a slack, useless shape as he gasps at the ceiling, counting the seconds that he gets to hold Tommy close to him. 

 

 

Alyssa drops a Dunkins coffee on his desk Monday morning. “How was flyover country?”

Jon grabs for it gratefully. “You’re wonderful.”

Alyssa smirks. “I know. I heard you had a late flight.” She drops her bag onto her desk, standing on tip toes to see Jon over the cubicle. “Tommy’s was good?”

“Tommy’s was good,” Jon says, and doesn’t think about the long, hot minutes they’d spent making out against Tommy’s door before he’d had to leave for the airport last night. Or the time that morning, in the shower, with Tommy on his knees again.

“Did you make it over to HQ?”

Jon takes a sip of coffee. “Ah, no we were. Pretty busy.” He clears his throat. “Unpacking and. Getting stuff. Unpacked.”

“Right,” Alyssa says, looking thoughtful. “Well, I’m sure you’ll be out there again, soon, anyways.”

Jon swallows. “Probably,” he says, noncommittally. 

He calls Tommy at lunch. “Axe keeps asking if I miss my partner in crime,” he says, fiddling with the cord of his desk phone. 

Tommy laughs. “What’d you tell him?”

“That I was pining desperately,” he says, and Tommy laughs again. In fairness, he had said that to Kelly, the first person to ask him, but by the time Axe, the fifth, had said it like it was the wittiest thing Jon had heard that day, he’d mostly only been able to muster a laugh. He thinks he mustered it, anyways. 

Tommy’s voice drops low. “Well, _your_ partner in crime is pining for his partner in crime’s dick, you can tell them.” He coughs. “That - uh sounded sexier in my head.” He pauses. “Oh god, I’m not on speaker, am I?”

Jon snorts, looking around the office. “No, dumbass.” He rubs his knuckles across his lips. “Pining, huh?”

Tommy makes a sound like he’s sucking on his lip. “Yep.”

“Cool,” Jon says, crossing his legs. “Cool cool.”

After that, the campaign turns over into high gear, and Jon goes from working long hours to longer hours, coming home most nights too tired to do much more than eat a protein bar or a microwave burrito and then falling into bed. He calls Tommy, sometimes. Sometimes they jerk off together, and sometimes they just talk, and once Tommy fell asleep mid-sentence and Jon listened to him breathe quietly on the line until he felt too guilty to stand it. 

He writes two speeches, goes for a run sixteen times, smokes up with Alyssa once, calls his Mom five times, and changes his sheets twice by the time Tommy texts him, _leaving for airport now, fyi_. 

Jon taps out, _: ) txt me when u land_

At the airport, Tommy hugs him, slides his hand along Jon’s cheek and throat. He smirks a little. “You shave for me?”

Jon shoves him, knows he’s blushing. “Shut up.” He picks up Tommy’s bags and hefts them into the trunk. Tommy can’t stop grinning at him. “Oh my god,” Jon says, “Get in the car.”

Tommy ducks his head in pleasure when there’s a chorus of “Tommy!” at the house. Someone presses a bottle of beer into his hand and someone slings their arm around his neck and Tommy says, around a half-smothered grin, “I missed you too, you assholes.”

In the bedroom hallway, a half an hour and a beer later, he hovers awkwardly in between doors with his bag. “Uh -”

“We haven’t found a subletter yet,” Jon explains, over the clatter and noise from the kitchen, “so your room is still free.”

Tommy nods jerkily. “Cool,” he says, dragging his bag to his old room. “Thanks.”

They go out for drinks with the rest of the house, and it’s good, and fun, and Jon sticks to beer, and when Tommy leans over halfway through and says, “You wanna get out of here,” Jon says, “Yeah,” like an instinct, without hesitation. 

Back home, Tommy puts his hand inside of Jon’s pants before they’ve finished making it to Jon’s bedroom. He makes a hot sound and says, “Oh, so you did shave for me,” and Jon pushes him inside his room and onto his bed, crawling up after him. 

“Eager,” Tommy says, laughing, cupping Jon’s face in his hands. Jon kisses him, wanting him from head to toe, wanting him so much it feels like a living thing under his skin. “You can -,” he tries to say, and hisses when Tommy slides his mouth to his jaw, his throat. “Do you wanna – Tommy, god, will you – fuck,” he pants, and pushes Tommy back by the shoulders. “Do you wanna fuck me?”

Tommy’s eyes widen. “Yeah,” he says, “I mean, of – god, of course I do.”

“Alright,” Jon says, swallowing. 

“Of course I do.”

"Alright,” Jon says, softer. 

They kiss each other out of their clothes. Jon puts his mouth on Tommy until Tommy has to squeeze the base of his dick, saying tightly, “I can’t -,” and Jon backs off, kissing his way up Tommy’s chest instead. 

When Tommy reaches over for the lube, Jon flips over onto his back and hooks his arm around one knee, holding himself up. “Jesus, look at you,” Tommy says, and Jon goes hot all over. 

Tommy’s hands shake a little when he’s squeezing the lube out, but when he presses a wet finger against Jon’s hole, he’s the one who says, “Shh, it’s alright,” and waits, petting him there, until Jon relaxes into it, and then until he’s arching up for it, rolling his hips and gasping with how much he wants it, how good it feels to have Tommy’s fingers teasing along his hole. 

“Please, Tommy,” Jon says, after Tommy’s been fingering him long enough that his cock is shiny and wet at the head. “Fuck me, please.”

“I’m gonna,” Tommy says, rolling a condom on his dick, kissing Jon’s shin, the top of his foot. “I’m gonna take care of you,” he says, and his face looks – Jon’s never seen that look before, doesn’t know what to make of it, doesn’t know what to do with the soft, reverent way Tommy’s sliding his hand along Jon’s thigh, hitching it up, spreading him wider. 

Tommy fucks him slowly, and Jon keeps his ankles locked against Tommy’s back so there’s barely any space between them. The pressure on his dick feels good, but mostly he’s thinking about the full, thick slide of Tommy’s dick inside of him. 

Tommy’s face is in Jon’s throat, has been since he pushed inside of him and his arms trembled too much to hold himself up. 

“Tommy,” Jon says, eyes closed, body bowing and arching in pleasure. “Tommy,” he says again, and feels Tommy’s lashes flutter against his throat. 

 

 

The next day is the donor event Tommy’s in town for and they leave for it around midday, taking a cab so their suit bags won’t get crushed or spattered with dirt. Jon goes and joins the other speechwriters for last minute edits and Tommy heads off to get ordered around a bit by the campaign director, but in the hallway before they separated, Tommy said, “Hey,” and leaned his head in, and Jon saw someone coming around the corner and startled backwards, saying, “Catch you later.” 

He feels sick to his stomach. He pulls his phone out and tries to send Tommy a text, but then the senator arrives and his focus is on the speech. 

Besides, what would he say? He doesn’t know why he did that. He doesn’t.

He makes his way towards the hotel conference room afterwards, where a bunch of staffers have taken over, and looks around. He stops Ronnie. “Have you seen Tommy?”

Ronnie shakes his head, “I think he’s on press coverage.”

“Right,” Jon says. 

So it’s not until Jon’s been dragged into a second round of editing and finished two cups of coffee and is looking for a place to change into his suit that he sees Tommy again, emerging from the bathroom just as Jon’s about to go in. 

His tie is loose around his neck and he’s got his empty suit bag in hand. “Hey,” he says, grinning immediately, some of the tension softening around his eyes. 

“Hey,” Jon says, hands going tingly. “Is that a good spot to change?” He holds up his own suit bag. 

Tommy leans back on the swing door and holds it open. “Yeah,” he says, glancing down at his watch. “I’ve got like three minutes, I can -,” he says, still grinning painfully wide, and then he’s following Jon in after and tugging him into the largest stall. 

“Hi,” he says, ducking his head forward to kiss him. 

Jon kisses him back, sighing a little, settling into it. Tommy’s fingers come up to curl into his hair, cupping the back of his skull. Jon lets himself have this for fifteen seconds, counting it, and then he puts his hand on Tommy’s chest. 

“I’m not sure,” he says, clearing his throat, “if we should keep doing this.”

He gives himself one more second to touch Tommy, and then he pulls his hand away, too. 

Tommy blinks at him. “What’re you – what do you mean?”

Jon bites the inside of his mouth. “Like this whole, hooking up on the campaign to relieve stress thing. Like. I just. I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”

“But the campaign isn’t over,” Tommy says dumbly. 

Jon’s stomach twists. “I know,” he says. His eyes feel hot. 

“You don’t -,” Tommy takes a step back. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No,” Jon says, too loudly in the bathroom. He’s never – he’s never hated himself quite like this before, but he does now, with the look on Tommy’s face. “I just – I don’t want to fuck things up with us.”

“Okay,” Tommy says, like he’s trying to figure out a logic problem. His phone starts to ring. “Is this about Allison?”

“No, it’s really, really not -”

“Because, I swear, we haven’t hooked up since –”

“I don’t – it’s not about -,” he says, shaking his head. He wishes they weren’t having this conversation in a fucking bathroom stall. He can see a small red mark, high up on Tommy’s throat, just under his ear, and he cuts his eyes away.

“- and that thing at the party was a mistake, a really big fucking mistake.”

“Tommy,” Jon says, and Tommy’s phone starts to buzz again. 

“Goddamnit. Just -,” he pulls his phone out of his pocket and checks it. “Look, just – don’t go anywhere tonight. I have to -,” he gestures with his phone, “I have to go, but please -”

“I won’t –”

“Okay,” Tommy says, and then he’s flipping the phone up to his ear and twisting his way out of the stall. “Yeah, I’m on my way right now. I’ll be there in thirty seconds.”

Jon changes into his suit slowly. He shakes his hands out when they start to tremble. He wants to – call Tommy back, take the words back, swallow them up again. He could – he could take it back, probably, and Tommy would believe him and he could have this, could have Tommy, for a little longer. It would be worth it, because Tommy’s always worth it, but it wouldn’t be fair, not when Tommy doesn’t know how fucked up Jon is about him. 

He remembers last night, how he’d woken up to find Tommy on his phone in the middle of the night, jet lag making him restless at odd hours, and how Jon had put his hand on Tommy’s chest and said, “Wanna go again?”

Tommy had fucked him on his belly, and Jon had pressed his hand to his mouth to stop himself from saying something stupid. 

He feels a sour taste rise up, and then he’s gagging into the toilet, retching emptily. He spits a couple of times, breathing through his nose, and then steps out of the stall. He splashes water on his face, in his mouth. It tastes like iron. 

He puts his tie on in the mirror. 

The problem with being a speechwriter, he thinks, is that there’s not much to do once the speech is finished. He heads back to the conference room and answers some emails, then gets pulled into an impromptu meeting about the teleprompter functionality. He sees Tommy across the room, a couple of times, and thinks, “This is what it’s going to be like, from now on.”

He gets a text from Tommy a little later, after the senator has gone up for his speech. _Can we talk ?_

 _Ya_ , he sends back, slipping away from the backstage area. 

_North staircase? Basement?_

Jon has no idea where the fuck that is. 

He stops Alyssa, “Do you know where the north staircase is?”

“What?” She looks a little harassed. “No, why would I know that? Do I look like the hotel concierge? Are you okay? You seem a little sweaty.”

“Uh, right,” Jon says, “Sorry, I gotta –”

He finally finds it, and Tommy waiting for him there, arms crossed. It makes the suit bunch up around his biceps and shoulders. 

“Tommy,” he says. Tommy turns around. He looks pale and a little pinched around the mouth. Jon thinks he might have been saying something under his breath, before Jon called his name.

“Hey,” Jon says, stepping forward. 

Tommy unfolds his arms. “Jon.”

Jon knows the next thing he says isn’t gonna be fair, but he says it anyways. “You wanted to talk?”

Tommy breathes out a long sigh. “Listen, I just. If I did something wrong, you can tell me, okay?” He lowers his voice, looking over his shoulder. “Did I hurt you – last night?

“No,” Jon says, “God, no, you didn’t. You didn’t hurt me.”

“I don’t understand,” Tommy says. “This morning you were -”

“I know,” Jon says loudly. 

Tommy looks confused. “That was good, wasn’t it? Hasn’t it been good?” He rubs the back of his neck. “Weirdly good?”

“You’re my best friend,” Jon says, looking at his shoes. “I don’t want – I can’t do anything to fuck that up.”

“You’re my best friend, too,” Tommy says, swallowing hard. “I would do anything – in this life or the next, to make you happy.”

Jon feels like there’s a hand around his throat. “I know you would -” 

“Well, then, why does it -”

“- you’re good, Tommy, you’re a really good person, and I -”

“ - I’m not, that’s got nothing to do with it, I just want to make you -”

“I’m in love with you,” Jon says, and it reverberates around the cement room. Tommy’s mouth clicks closed. “I think I’m in love with you, and I can’t have a couple of meaningless hook-ups on the campaign trail and then go back to pretending it never happened.”

Jon grips the railing. Some of the paint flecks slough off and fall to the ground. He can hear his own breathing in his ears. 

"I thought,” Tommy says, “it was meaningful.”

Jon looks at him. 

“I thought we were hooking up like - meaningfully.” Tommy’s face is very careful. 

Jon breathes out sharp through his nose. “I thought you wanted like - stress relief,” and he doesn’t mean it to, but it comes out like a question. 

Tommy looks away. “I just wanted – you. I said that because - I didn’t want to scare you off.”

Jon says, “No, that’s - _I _didn’t want to scare you off.”__

__“I’m not scared of – you don’t scare me, Favreau.” Tommy shakes his head, stepping closer. “I mean, you fucking terrify me, this fucking terrifies me, but I’m not – fuck, not afraid of you. I’m not afraid of us.” He shakes his head again. “I don’t even know what you’ve been thinking, I guess,” he admits._ _

__“I’m selfish,” Jon says, like ripping a bandage off. “I thought if we talked about it, we’d have to stop. I thought if I told you, it would stop and I couldn’t -,” he breaks off, something hard and sharp in his throat making it difficult to talk. “I’m really selfish.”_ _

__Tommy pauses mid-step, like he’s calculating something in his head. “So. You don’t want to stop.”_ _

__Jon’s heart is thundering – he thinks the people in the audience watching the senator’s speech could probably hear it, if they put their fingertips to the ground. Jon’s whole heart is shaking the building, he can tell._ _

__“I don’t want to stop,” Jon says, and Tommy’s so close he can see the way his eyes are a little shiny, the way his mouth keeps trying to twitch up into a smile. He remembers the first time Tommy kissed him, how he’d waited and waited, watching Jon. Asking for permission._ _

__He takes a deep breath, gathers up all the places where he stores the lessons he’s been taught in how to be good and brave, remembers how Tommy smiled at him in bed this morning, the sunlight soft on his face, looking at Jon like he was home._ _

__He can – he can be brave, he thinks, and says, “I don’t want to do – any of this -,” and he brandishes his arms around as if it could encompass everything, “without you.”_ _

__“Jon -,” Tommy says, stepping forward._ _

__“I want to be with you for all of it,” he gets out, and meets Tommy halfway, surging up to kiss him hard. To hold him close, again._ _

__“Listen,” Tommy says, pulling back, breath a little ragged. “I’m not fucking going anywhere.”_ _

__“Okay,” Jon says, curling his fingers around the lapels of Tommy’s suit, fist over heart._ _

__“We’re gonna be like 80 years old and swearing at C-SPAN together,” Tommy breathes, tipping his forehead against Jon’s._ _

__Jon laughs. “I can – I can do that. I could see that. Retire somewhere sunny, get a couple of dogs?”_ _

__Tommy’s got his hand on Jon’s hip, like he isn’t thinking of moving away anytime soon. “Maybe somewhere by the beach. Somewhere with palm trees,” he says, and kisses Jon again._ _

__From above, Jon hears the sound of the audience clambering to their feet and a wave of applause reverberating through the floors._ _

__Tommy looks up. “I guess the speech went well.”_ _

__“Guess so.” He takes Tommy’s hand and weaves their fingers together. “Let’s go up and see?”_ _

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very much for reading!


End file.
